Book Deals: Week of March 26, 2018

By Rachel Deahl
|

Mar 23, 2018

Lackey Gets ‘Impossible’ at Roaring Brook

After a five-house auction, Macmillan’s Jen Besser won North American rights to Lindsay Lackey’s debut, All the Impossible Things, for the house’s Roaring Brook Press imprint. The middle grade novel was sold by Elena Giovinazzo at Pippin Properties; she said the book is about a girl in the foster care system learning to control a power passed down from her mother: “the ability to harness the wind.” The novel is set for fall 2019.

Tor Teen Nabs Trilogy

Ali Fisher at Tor Teen bought North American rights, at auction, to a teen trilogy by TJ Klune. Deidre Knight at the Knight Agency represented Klune in the three-book deal and described the series as an “LGBT #ownvoices” one (the hashtag refers to a work in which an author shares the same marginalized identity as his or her central character). The series is about a group of teen superheroes and the everyday boy who follows them. The first title is set for a winter 2020 release.

Avery Takes ‘Lessons’ from Gisele

Gisele Bündchen sold her first book, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, to Caroline Sutton at Avery. Jim Levine, at Levine Greenberg Rostan, represented the fashion star in the deal, for North American rights. Avery said Bündchen will chronicle “the lessons she has learned that have made her who she is today, traveling from an ordinary childhood in southern Brazil to international fame as the world’s top supermodel, noted philanthropist, and environmental activist.” Lessons is set for this fall.

Caldecott Winner Re-ups at Feiwel

For Feiwel and Friends, Liz Szabla took North American rights to two more picture books by 2018 Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell. The author, who won the Caldecott for his 2017 book Wolf in the Snow (also published by Feiwel), will release the currently untitled books in fall 2020 and fall 2021. He was represented by Rosemary Stimola at Stimola Literary Studio.

Duo Fix Their “Appetites” at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Nutritional biologists David Raubenheimer and Stephen J. Simpson sold North American rights to The Five Appetites: What Every Other Species Knows About Health and Diet That We Humans Don’t, and How We Can Fix That to Deb Brody at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The book, HMH said, will rely on research about the eating habits of various creatures from “baboons to crickets” to reveal “nature’s adaptive secrets for eating correctly at every stage in our life cycle.” Catherine Drayton at InkWell Management handled the sale of the book, which is slated for 2020.

Photogs Place Their “Halo” on SMP

In a six-figure acquisition, Monique Patterson at St. Martin’s Press took world rights to Kahran and Regis Bethencourt’s Halo: Fantastic Visions of Blackness. The authors, husband-and-wife photographers whose work has appeared in such outlets as the New York Times and BET.com, were represented by Tanya McKinnon at McKinnon McIntyre. SMP said the book, based on the Bethencourts’ photographs of black girls, is “a photographic celebration of beauty and empowerment” that showcases its subjects “through the wide lenses of fantasy and science fiction.” Halo is tentatively slated for fall 2019.

Briefs

YA author Katie Sise (The Boyfriend App) sold world rights to her debut adult novel, We Were Mothers, to Carmen Johnson at Amazon’s Little A imprint. The book, sold by Dan Mandel at Greenberger Associates, is, Little A said, about three marriages that “suddenly turn very dark over the course of a single weekend.” The book is set for release this October.

Christopher A. Snyder, history professor at Mississippi State University, sold Gatsby’s Oxford: Scott, Zelda, and the Jazz Age Invasion of Britain (1919–1929) to Claiborne Hancock at Pegasus Books. Mark Gottlieb at Trident Media Group, who sold North American rights to Hancock in a preempt, said the book is about the creation of Jay Gatsby, “war hero and Oxford man, and how the City of Dreaming Spires attracted an astounding array of writers and intellectuals.”

Journalist Anissa Gray’s debut novel, The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls, was bought by Amanda Bergeron at Berkley in a North American rights deal. The book, set for early 2019, follows an African-American family in Michigan who, the publisher said, are dealing with the fallout from their eldest sister and her husband being sent to prison. Michelle Brower at Aevitas Creative Management did the deal.

CORRECTION: This story initially referred to Snyder as a professor at Michigan State University. He is a professor as Mississippi State.

A version of this article appeared in the 03/26/2018 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Deals

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